Hours after Silverstone appealed to Formula One organisers to give race fans a better deal – especially for Friday practice sessions – changes were confirmed for next season that should persuade teams to get out on track.

Friday's opening session at the British Grand Prix was almost a complete washout, with tens of thousands of spectators seeing little action between an opening flurry of activity and a belated effort by teams to get their cars out.

There was less than quarter of an hour remaining when Toro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo became the first driver to set a lap time. To be fair to the teams there was little to be learned in the wet conditions, considering that Sunday's British Grand Prix is expected to run in the dry.

But Richard Phillips, Silverstone's managing director, said after the session: "It is time for a rule change, to make the teams go out and put on a display on Friday. Because you're not going to build a fan base round the world, are you? The British fans come whatever. But it's not good. They should get a better deal for Friday.

"But we probably need to add some more bells and whistles to what we do to make sure they're looked after just in case things happen."

Hours later his concerns were at least partly addressed when the FIA coincidentally confirmed that next season each driver will be provided with one extra set of tyres for use only during the first 30 minutes of the first practice session on Friday, to encourage teams to take to the track without having to worry about using valuable tyre wear.

There were plenty of worried faces around Silverstone a few weeks ago, with poor ticket sales and memories of last year's disaster still fresh in the mind. In 2012 the weather was so poor that Phillips asked fans not to turn up on Saturday, although there was a record turnout of 127,000 on the Sunday.

This year tickets were put up for sale on the gate for the first time and on Friday, despite the weather, there was a crowd of 80,000 and Phillips expects a three-day figure of more than 300,000, the third-best of all time. "We've seen huge sales in the last six weeks and after what we went through last year that's quite an achievement," said Phillips. "Several weeks ago we were 10% down, which is not massive, but enough to make a considerable financial difference. So I'm really pleased. Obviously you get concerned when you go through a difficult year like last year, that you won't recover from it. But confidence is back. We've done a lot of work to lower the water table. And the next two days look good. I'm pleased we've got back to where we are."

Silverstone had to pay out over £1m to disgruntled fans last year. "Some of that was insured," said Phillips. "We also compensated some people we felt sorry for. They're a bit mean when it comes to paying out, the old insurers."

The tyre rule was one of a number of changes that the FIA announced following a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council. Others saw confirmation of the introduction of a penalty points systemsimilar to that applied to road-car users in the United Kingdom.

A statement from the FIA confirmed: "If a driver accumulates more than 12 points he will be banned from the next race. Points will stay on a driver's licence for 12 months."